260 Drawing

Albert Janzen is the winner of the Luxembourg Art Prize 2015. He was born in 1989 in Siberia and grew up in Germany. After 13 years at the School of Music and Art he decided to follow his artistic path autonomously alongside studying Philosophy and Mathematics in Berlin. It was during this time that he discovered his love for the line. He went to London to study Logic and became inspired by the autonomous work of Cy Twombly, Gerhard Richter and Zao Wou-Ki. In 2015 Albert won the Luxembourg Art Prize 2015 whilst finishing his Masters in Logic at the University of Amsterdam. Lines are among the most intuitive means to perceive and understand our environment. Every recognition of visual structures depends on a recognition of lines. They are so basic that there is nothing we can conceive beyond them. Anything can be constructed with lines but nothing constructs lines. The ultimate simplicity of the line provides its independent aesthetics. It does not represent an idea as it is not constructed by anything else than itself. To reveal this aesthetic power the line has to be self-referential. Albert draws lines not to construct something, but to draw lines. The shapes and patterns occurring in his drawings have no other purpose than to reveal the movements of lines. The observer of his lines is confronted with an independent entity.